School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Hanley Castle High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 44 families who named Hanley Castle High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 178 and 219 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Worcestershire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 12 years of official figures.

1.23

first choices for every place available

219 first preferences for 178 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Hanley Castle High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Hanley Castle High School, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Worcestershire as a whole and cover every state-funded school in the authority. Anyone quoting you odds for a named school is making them up.

Across Worcestershire, 19.7% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 90 of 458 appeals heard in 2024–2026. The England figure is 20.1%.

A panel is not deciding whether you want the school. It decides whether the admission arrangements were lawful and correctly applied, and then whether the harm to your child of not being admitted outweighs the harm to the school of going over its published number. Cases built on preference rather than on those two questions are the ones that fail.

See the full appeal figures for Worcestershire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Worcestershire ones. Whichever school you are appealing for, the panel works through the same two stages and is required to ignore the same things.

How contested this school has been

Hanley Castle High School turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Hanley Castle High School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.32 per place 208 first choices 157 places 2016/17 1.37 per place 219 first choices 160 places 2017/18 1.26 per place 220 first choices 174 places 2018/19 1.33 per place 234 first choices 176 places 2019/20 1.21 per place 209 first choices 173 places 2020/21 0.99 per place 180 first choices 181 places 2021/22 1.22 per place 220 first choices 181 places 2022/23 1.05 per place 188 first choices 179 places 2023/24 1.11 per place 199 first choices 180 places 2024/25 1.08 per place 198 first choices 184 places 2025/26 1.06 per place 201 first choices 189 places 2026/27 1.23 per place 219 first choices 178 places
First preferences per place at Hanley Castle High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 219 first preferences for 178 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Hanley Castle High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 157 208 154 1.32
2016/17 160 219 157 1.37
2017/18 174 220 173 1.26
2018/19 176 234 173 1.33
2019/20 173 209 170 1.21
2020/21 181 180 177 0.99
2021/22 181 220 178 1.22
2022/23 179 188 177 1.05
2023/24 180 199 178 1.11
2024/25 184 198 178 1.08
2025/26 189 201 185 1.06
2026/27 178 219 175 1.23

Places offered

178

in 2026/27

Named first choice

219

368 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

79.9%

175 of 219

Offers to families outside the council

8%

15 of 178 offers

Was the school full?

This is the question a panel spends most of its time on. At the second stage of an appeal it weighs the harm to the school of taking an extra child against the harm to your child of being refused — and how much room the school has is the heart of that. The admission authority has to show harm over and above the fact that its published number has been reached, so it is fair to ask what the specific harm is — how the second stage actually works.

Places, Years 7 to 11

903

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

911

100.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

8

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

200

excluded from the figures above

Read this before you use these numbers

These are whole-school figures across Years 7 to 11, not the year group you are appealing for. A school can hold spare places in its upper years while the year you want is genuinely full, and the panel will have the year-group numbers in front of it. So this does not show that Hanley Castle High School has room for your child.

They are also the school's own reported capacity, as at 1 May 2025 — a year behind the application figures further up this page, and a description rather than a finding.

On the published figures Hanley Castle High School was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Hanley Castle High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,009 places 903 on roll 2012/13 1,009 places 936 on roll 2013/14 1,009 places 951 on roll 2014/15 1,009 places 969 on roll 2015/16 1,009 places 998 on roll 2016/17 1,009 places 1,021 on roll 2017/18 1,023 places 1,031 on roll 2018/19 1,023 places 1,060 on roll 2020/21 1,023 places 1,067 on roll 2021/22 1,100 places 1,079 on roll 2022/23 1,100 places 1,101 on roll 2023/24 1,113 places 1,078 on roll 2024/25 1,103 places 1,100 on roll
Whole-school figures including any sixth form, as at 1 May each year. 2019/20 is missing because the 2020 School Capacity survey was cancelled.

Department for Education, School capacity, school-level file, 2024/25. Published under the Open Government Licence.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Worcestershire

Postcode WR8 0BL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137101).

Other contested secondary schools in Worcestershire

Applications and offers: Department for Education, Primary and secondary school applications and offers, school-level file, 2026/27. Appeal figures: Admission appeals in England. Both under the Open Government Licence.